I Killed the King / Andrea Hannah & Rebecca Mix / Book Review

I KILLED THE KING

After a decade of war, the kingdoms of Avendell and Istellia want peace. Everyone has flocked to Avendell Castle for the signing of the treaty. Nobody would miss the all-night masquerade to celebration.

But as the partygoers gather, Avendell's King Costis summons a small group to his inner chamber: his son the crown prince, the Istellian treaty representative, a wild beast tamer, a questionable palace healer, and the king's own personal guard. And before he can tell them why he's brought them together, the room goes dark.

When the mage lights come back, the king is dead. The princess's knife is in his side, in the weak spot only his guard knew of. The body is frothing at the mouth with venom from the beast tamer's monsters. An assassin tumbles out of the wardrobe, confused and dismayed with an invitation in the crown prince's handwriting in her pocket. And the healer is too drunk to make sense of anything except the fact that they've got to tell no one, not until they've sorted out just which one of them killed the king... and why.

THOUGHTS

This fantasy novel is... uninspiring. I wanted to like it. I kept wanting to like it. But it consistently fell flat to me. I feel like there are good ideas here, but the execution is lackluster. I was utterly unimpressed and uninvested.

PROS

Ticking Clock	I liked the locked-room and ticking-clock aspects to this fantasy. It's not often you see a murder mystery wrapped up in a fantasy setting. Though the nature of the locked room itself does keep expanding as one and then all of these characters leave the actual locked room, they're still very much trapped due to an unnatural snowstorm that has descended. And with a very important treaty to sign at dawn, there's a very pressing sense of time running out.
Slow Unravelling	There's a definite feeling right from the start that there's something just off screen, slithering behind each turn this plot takes. Strings are being pulled, and nobody knows the whole picture even if they think that they do. And I really like that we take our time to let the pieces land where they may, to let that sinister reality come to its fruition. It's a nice unraveling, a nice locking into place. Wherever else this plot falls flat, I did like the overall sense of sinister conspiracy.
Winter Blues	This is the perfect winter read! It's got a cold and blustery setting in a drafty old castle at the scene of a murder. What could be better than that? And as the night goes on, everything gets more and more dire. People are dropping left and right. Secrets are unveiled that unraveled everything we know. The snow is piling up, and nobody can leave... Yeah, like I said: the perfect winter night read.

CONS

I don't know. There are a lot of people in this cast, and even as I'm writing this review, I don't really remember any of them. They felt pretty generic, so... I think you see the problem.	Not Memorable
With so many lead characters, all the narrative voices blend together. There's just too much of a cast, and their voices didn't stand out enough to make them worth switching perspective, to be honest. It could have been third person omniscient to, I believe, much better effect (though I know that third-omniscient has gone out of style, so maybe that's why we didn't go that route). So many chapters, it doesn't really matter who the perspective character is, and that's unfortunate.	Blending Together
Every co-author pair works differently. Some write so seamlessly that you wouldn't even know it was two authorial voices rather than one. In this book, that really isn't the case. The characters don't come across as consistent enough to have been written by one mind (or two in perfect harmony). There's a lot of "establishing a fact" that happens in this book that feels like... notes that should have been sent over to the co-author instead of actual, hard-copy writing. (Bearing in mind, of course, that I did read an early edition, so perhaps that will change by final publication.) It felt like the authors were working remotely and leaving key characterization notes within the chapters themselves so that their co-author could follow along and pick right up where they left off. And that... doesn't work well. Sorry. It feels like a conversation between two co-workers still in the messy-drafting phase instead of a beautiful, woven tapestry of a literary piece. It doesn't feel polished. These characters aren't known backwards and forwards by either author, and the book suffers for it.	Inconsistent

Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
5/10

Fans of Tamsyn Muir's Gideon the Ninth will like this locked-room-style murder fantasy. Those who loved the ruthlessly cunning cast of Christine Lynn Herman & Amanda Foody's All of Us Villains will like this cast of characters up to no good.

Details Publisher: Storytide Date: September 16, 2025 Series: N/A Add to Goodreads Buy it HERE

Note: I was provided with an ARC by the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions here are my own.